No Country for Women - Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

Mr Badawi’s wife said that judges in Saudi Arabia’s criminal court want Raif Badawi to undergo a re-trial for apostasy. If found guilty, he would face a death sentence. She said the “dangerous information” had come from “official sources” inside the conservative kingdom, where Mr Badawi has already been sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes – administered at a rate of 50 per week – for criticising the country’s clerics through his liberal blog.

In 2013, a judge threw out the charge of apostasy against the 31-year-old blogger after he assured the court that he was a Muslim. The evidence against him had included the fact that he pressed the “Like” button on a Facebook page for Arab Christians.
The news that the charge may now be re-examined will come as a bitter blow to Mr Badawi’s family and supporters, who had hoped that the international pressure over his case would prompt Saudi Arabia to reduce his sentence.

I am not like Badawi’s Saudi relatives. I don’t want Saudi Arabia to reduce his sentence. I want Saudi Arabia to free him and honor him as a free thinker. If you believe in human rights, freedom of expression and democracy at all, you should not only ask the people of your country to practice them, you should tell the whole world to practice them, starting with the countries you are friends with. Why would you even want to maintain a friendship with them if they never care enough to listen to sound advice from you? Now it is time to decide; please decide whether you want to remain friends with an undemocratic country which is a violator of human rights and freedom of expression.

Sincerely Yours,
Taslima Nasreen

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We live in a world where we get punished for being liberal. Raef Badawi, the Saudi rights activist is now sentenced to 7 years in prison and 600 lashes for setting up a liberal network and for ‘insulting Islam’. The Liberal Network is now banned. Anything ‘liberal’ or progressive or secular or scientific is anti-Islam. Isn’t it?

Saudi Arabia is part of our world. I don’t know how many people and how many states would sincerely condemn Saudi authority for its insanity? It is very alarming that Muslim countries are increasing influenced by Saudi Arabia. Non Arabic Muslims are often forced to follow Saudi culture. Free thinkers are getting executed, prisoned, exiled by almost all Islamic states. Violating freedom of expression has now become a synonym of Islamic culture.

For the sake of humanity, please stop the authorities from becoming completely insane. Islam may celebrate insanity, but most inhabitants of today’s earth do not.

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He is a poet, photographer, and an actor. He looks too sexy because of his qualities. He was one of those handsome men who were deported from Saudi Arabia for being ‘too handsome’.Saudi authorities feared that all Saudi women would be crazy for three handsome men.

Saudi authorities were really very intelligent and wise! If Omar Borkan were in the Jenadrivah Heritage & Culture Festival in Riyadh, it would have been a disaster. No woman would have looked at anything else in the festival but Omar and two other beautiful men. Saudi women were so sick and tired for being suppressed that they could leave their husbands and children for those brown and handsome.

Handsome men came from the UAE. So the Saudi authorities could deport them from Saudi Arabia. But what if some Saudi men are found too sexy and too handsome? Saudi authorities would not be able to deport them from their own country. In that case they should seriously think of forcing sexy men to wear burqas. All beautiful women wear burqas in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Society is now calm and quiet. If all beautiful men wear burqas, everybody will find tranquility they need. Ugly fat men can walk around freely. No one looks at them anyway.

I like Omar. I tell you the truth why I like him so much. I like him for wearing eye-liner. His eye-liner has made him look so cute and yummy!

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Women are allowed to cycle, but not to go anywhere: They have to be nowhere else but in parks, to be dressed in full Islamic body coverings and accompanied by a male relative. They are allowed to bike for recreational purposes only, not as a primary mode of transportation.

I would have thought women were not allowed to drive but allowed to cycle in Saudi Arabia if I did not read the recent news on lifting ban on women’s cycling. Now I know that Saudi women did not have the right to cycle until this week. I now know that it is a crime for them to cycle to a nearby park without accompanied by a male relative, and even if they are accompanied by a male relative it is a crime for women to cycle to a nearby hospital to see their sick parents or children.

I tell you what exactly happened in Saudi Arabia. Women who are in prison cells for their crime being women are now allowed to walk on a narrow and dark prison cell corridor while they are heavily shackled and guarded by the prison guard.

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Once upon a time almost every society used to behead ‘sinners’ and criminals. But they stopped beheading as they evolved. Like the countries stop having death penalty as they become civilized. What is the difference between hanging, beheading and lethal injection? Probably lethal injection is the least painless method for execution. Beheading looks scary. It is Muslims who still continue beheading like their ancestors. Will Islamic countries ever abolish death penalty? Islamic countries should abolish death penalty as they claim Allah is most merciful and forgiving. Whenever I read the Quranic verses about killing infidels, I feel my assassins are holding a sharp sword to my throat. [Read more…]

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A Wahhabi religious cleric in Saudi Arabia, Muhammed al-Arifi, who is very influential in Jihadi circles, has recently issued a fatwa (religious edict) that permits all Jihadist militants in Syria to engage in short-lived marriages with Syrian women that each lasts for a few hours in order to satisfy their sexual desires and boost their determination in killing Syrians. He called the marriage as ‘intercourse marriage’. It requires that the Syrian female be at least 14 years old, widowed, or divorced.

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About 180 apartments in Amsterdam have been given special makeovers which suit the wishes of Muslim residents. Features include individual taps that can be used for ritual cleansing before prayers and sliding doors to keep men and women apart.

A Muslim resident says,

“I wanted a closed kitchen, in order to be able to close the kitchen off now and then for a bit more privacy. Sometimes we like to be separated, the women on one side and the men on the other.”